A Colombian breakfast is not just one thing, sort of like you might think a proper English fry up would be. I think that a Colombian breakfast can actually have many different possibilities limited only by the appetite, types of leftovers, and guided by the region of Colombia you are in/from.

This post discusses a breakfast that includes changua, arepas, pan de bono, and patacones. (I will talk about how to make each of those items below.) What you dont see is what you might have to drink with this meal. That could include aqua de panela, strong Colombian coffee, or even steaming hot chocolate. It could easily have been beans, rice, chicharrones, and fried eggs with a side of hogao. This breakfast is an amalgam of breakfasts I had as a kid at home and while on vacation in Bogota, Colombia.

This set of food may LOOK simple but it can take a while and lots of energy.

I would suggest starting with the Pan De Bono and I will cover that first.

Pan De Bono

Note: The translated ingredients and directions on the mix I show below are incorrect! I will give you the correct directions here in English.

Ingredients:

1 box of Pan De Bono mix

3 cups grated fresh queso blanco (farmer’s cheese – do not try to substitute this. Go to a latino market and get it fresh)

3 tablespoons melted butter

3 teaspoons sugar

1 cup milk

Directions:

Grate the queso blanco with a fine grater. It is fragile and will crumble/grate easily. Do enough to equal 3 cups. Try to buy enough so that you can eat some slices of it later.

Pinch off small balls and then knead a bit more and then roll out into little snakes about 3.5 inches long and 1/2 inch thick. Gently pinch the snake into a little circle and bake at 450 F on parchment for about 15 minutes.

In a large bowl pour in 2 cups of harina, 2 teaspoons of salt and mix well. Add the 3 cups of boiling water and mix with a spoon. Before it cools much knead it with your hands. My grandmother starts kneading almost right away with her heat-tolerant asbestos hands! I cant do that so I let it cool a bit.Knead into a rubber not overly sticky ball. If its very sticky add more harina. I had to do that and feel that I need to work more on my technique!

Form the dough into little patties and then either grill or cook in a well seasoned cast iron pan. Its ok if the interior is a bit moist. These can burn easily and dry out easily. I like them toasty, adds nice flavor.

Ok, now you have all the sides to the main part of the breakfast, Changua! This is a very rich concoction of milk and eggs that is quite filling and very welcome in the morning. My father ADORED changua and this dish reminds me so much of him that I actually feel sad when I think of it, make it, and eat it. I can still see him bending over a fresh bowl of changua, beaming with joy, inhaling the scent and blissing out on the flavor and the memories from Colombia. We lost my father in 1999 to brutal early onset Alzheimers Disease.

Colombian Changua

Ingredients:

4 cups milk

4 or 6 eggs

1/4 cup diced onions (I used vidalias)

2 tablespoons butter

Dash of cominos

diced green onions, to taste

diced cilantro, to taste

Directions:

Melt butter in a large milk-boiling-friendly pot, add onions and cominos. Saute on low heat until golden brown.

Add 4 cups of milk and bring to a rolling simmer (do not boil so hard that it boils over, that only puts you in a bad mood).

Once up to the boiling simmer add eggs Allow to simmer for between 5 and 10 minutes (some people like the egg well cooked, others like it barely cooked at all).

Add diced green onions and cilantro to serving bowls and then ladle out servings that include eggs and plenty of broth.

Enjoy with all the sides you made all morning long and then collapse on the couch for a leisurely nap.

Hi Nika, your queso-arepa-cilantro pic looks stunning. Can you tell me anything about the cheese though? (I live in Germany, no latino markets here….)It’s a cow’s cheese, right? Has it got a sharp flavour? I can’t begin to think what it might be called here…It looks like such a perfect nibble, to serve with drinks etc. Impressive stuff.

bexs: glad you liked it! Queso Blanco is an acid precipitated cheese. Made fresh from cow’s milk. As it is an acid precipitated cheese it doesnt melt, has a tangy flavor and a “rubbery” feel against the teeth.

You can make it at home easily!

Here is a recipe for it:

Ingredients:

1 Gal Whole Milk
1/4 C fresh squeezed lemon juice

Directions:

Heat milk up to 180 F (82 C) stirring constantly. Do not to burn the milk!

Whisk in the lemon juice, stir for 10-15 minutes.

Pour the now curdled milk through a strainer or colander that has been lined with a moistened cheese cloth.

Cool for about 20 minutes, pull the ends of the cheese cloth together and make a little packet out of it.

Hang the ball of cheese in the cloth to drain in the fridge for some 7 hours or so. You want it to hang until the dripping of whey stops (hang it over a bowl in the fridge).

Thanks so much for this post! I was drooling over the breakfast photos on flickr and was really curious about what everything was! Also, thanks for the cheesemaking instructions…I’ll be trying it sometime soon

This is completely different from the Delicioso website. This is a food blog – a good one – written by Nika, a Colombian-American chica. Nika's Culinaria is a vast and varied blog. In her own words: "I post a……

Jackie: oh that must be so frustrating! Make sure that you measure the temperature of your milk, get a candy thermometer and watch it so see that you get to the temp needed. Once you add the acid, keep going with the stirring until it breaks and curdles. If you are measuring in C, make sure that I converted the number correctly (I cant remember if I calculated it or if someone else did).

Over a direct source of heat warm 1 gallon of milk to 180 degrees Fahrenheit, stirring often to keep it from scorching. Maintain this temperature for several minutes. Slowly add vinegar until the curds separate from the whey. Usually 1/4 cup of vinegar will precipitate 1 gallon of milk.

Pour the curds and whey into a cheesecloth-lined colander. Tie the four corners of the cheesecloth into a knot and hang to drain for several hours or until the bag of curds stops dripping. Take the mass of curds out of the cheesecloth. It will be a solid bag of curd. It may be wrapped in Saran Wrap and stored in the refrigerator until needed. It will keep up to 1 week.

Oh thank you so much. I am colombian but grew up on american fast food. Ive been wanting to learn how to cook my childhood meals. Thank you so much, now I know what ingredients Im looking for at the store…..Thanks!

hola!
Im Colombian living in Liverpool. Im tryin to teach my pupils here to prepare changua and some recipes from Boyaca, where I come from. It’s lovely to find a website like yours! Though I know the recipes in another way, that’s pretty it! The hardest is to find the ingredients. Coriander doesn’t taste the sam nad trying to make some fresh chees is really hard. Anyway thanks for your work!
Carolina

Nika,
I live in Michigan, but was just in Miami and ate pandebono at a restaurant called OLA and fell in love with it. Any idea where I can purchase the pandebono mix? I should have purchased it while in Miami, but didn’t. Can I buy it on the internet?
Carol

Nika this website is wonderful!! I was born in the US but was raised eating all this wonderful delicious colombian food and and elated to now be able to cook it for MY mom and surprise her! Thanks again!!

Changua is what we call Grandpa Soup in my family because he would often make it for us in the morning. Sometimes he would put in small pieces of French bread or potatoes. Thanks for bringing back a wonderful memory. I’ll have to make some soon.

Hi Nika! I realize a lot of these posts are older so I hope you will see this. Many years ago I was a foreign exchange student in Colombia. Their cook used to make something a lot that was flat and round. Almost like the size of a tostada but appeared more flour than corn based. It was fried but not too much as it still retained it’s yellowish color. That was my favorite and I was always asking her for them. You put either cheese, butter, or jam on it. It is not mentioned here. I know it started with a “P” but it was not Pan de Bono. It was 1 word and I know I would recognize it if I heard the word or saw it again.
Another time I was in El Salvador and we were in some remote areas and the local people were making the same thing. Any idea what that would be? Thanks so much!

When I visited Colombia in 1972, my Aunt ground fresh corn to make arepas. They tasted incredible. I have been able to find masarepa for many years, but the arepas never taste like hers. That fresh corn taste is what I miss. Do you know of a way to make the arepas taste more corn-like?

I was so happy to stumble upon your recipes! I lived in Colombia for a year and recently moved back to India (where I’m from). I miss pan de bono and queso blanco so much! My friends used to call it “chui chui” becuase of the sound it makes when you eat it

I have two questions –

– Queso blanco has that distinctive yummy, salty taste. At what stage of the recipe do you add the salt? and how much would you add?

– Unfortunately we dont get any pan de bono mix in Bombay. We do get tapioca flour though, do you think I could make my own masarepa at home? Do you have a recipe for how to make the pan de bono mix from scratch?